Thursday, February 28, 2013

Early Warning System

I was giving a course today, and we were talking about whether to do agile release planning at the beginning of the effort.
(I guess I must add that release planning always means release plan refactoring every sprint. To whatever degree it is needed.)
My advice is that most teams that I see need agile release planning. For a day or two before they start sprinting.
So, one question is: why do agile release planning?  And there are many reasons.
One additional reason: Early Warning System.
The agile release plan gets reflected in a release burndown chart. And the release burndown chart can show the team if or when it starts to get into ‘trouble’ versus the stories they expected to delivery in this release.
And then, knowing that, the team can make adjustments.  But, they cannot know they are in trouble without an early warning system.

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